Oh The Places I'll Go...

Monday, May 20, 2013

After Oxford we drove for a little while to Warwick Castle that I must say was freaking amazing! It could possibly be my favorite thing so far, but thats because I'm a nerd and was just imagining myself living there back in the day. I took a few videos, and didn't even get to tour the whole thing because it was so big and we didn't have enough time....But here is what we did get to see! :)

I loved this castle! It was almost my favorite part of London! I wish I could have had the opportunity to see the Tower of London more than just from a distance, but I suppose that that will be for the next time I am in London.

This is what you see when you first get to the castle.

Right when we walked in to tour Warwick we saw these awesome lock up things. I feel like they suit us well!

The garden was absolutely beautiful! And it wouldn't be the same without some silly pictures, right!?

Friday, May 17, 2013

So we had another early morning and had to be in the lobby
at 8am. Luckily, we didn’t have to ride the tube today so we got on the bus and
I would like to give a shout out to our awesome bus driver because he was a
BAMF! Anyways we had a 45 min drive to Oxford and it was freaking cold outside,
but the trip was totally worth it. We got there and met our tour guide who was
such a nice woman and very knowledgeable.

[Insert pictures of town of Oxford]

After we met her we traveled to our destination, which by
the way was ridiculous because we were running late so we were practically
sprinting down the street. Finally after being out of breath we stopped in
front of this beautifully old building.

She explained that it was one of the colleges in Oxford. One
thing that I didn’t understand today was how the University of Oxford was, and
this is what she said. The University of Oxford is like the government of the
United States. There is the government and then there are 50 separate states that
all go by their own rules but they all answer to the central part which is the
government. It is the same with the school, There is the University, and then
there are 38 colleges that run themselves, but when you get the degree you
don’t get it from the college but from the University.

Alice In Wonderland

Okay so one of the most interesting things about this
college has to do with Alice and Wonderland, and this is what our tour guide
told us…

There was a professor at Christ Church that was a photographer
and a math professor who used to take pictures of the Deans 3 daughters so he
would take them out on this boat on the rivers surrounding Oxford and since
they didn’t have much to do out there so the professor would tell them stories.
Eventually someone convinced him to publish these stories and he published them
under the name Lewis Carroll. Which were the adventures of Alice in Wonderland
and one of the 3 daughters was named Alice. So they were based off of her and
the different things around Oxford.

The dean of the school (aka Alice’s father) was supposed to
be represented by the rabbit who was always late. Now before I go on I need to
give a little back story about him being late…So at Christ Church they would
ring the bell 101 times (for every student they had) at 9:05 to tell people its
time to stop drinking so that they could make their way back before the last
bell was heard because if they didn’t, when the last bell chimed they would
close the gate and they would be locked down. The reason why it was 9:05 was
because they were 5 min ahead of Greenwich time, which was the main time. So on
Sunday’s the dean would be on his way to church and would be running late and
because it was at 6:05 the doors would be locked and he would have to go all
the way around.

This is a picture of Henry the VIII, he is supposed to represent the Queen
of Hearts because both of them liked to chop peoples heads off.

This is an actual picture of Alice, the real little girl, and if you look in the corner there is the cartoon picture of Alice from the Disney Movie.

This is a picture of a window and if you look really close
you can see different characters of Alice in Wonderland and I thought it was
cool!

If you have read the Alice in Wonderland books there is a
story about when she takes a potion and her neck gets really long, and he got
that from these statues in the fireplace. The picture is a little blurry, but you get the point.

This is a picture of a Memorial to all the family members of
people who were part of the college who died in World War I. So the story
behind this is that Alice and a prince Named Leopold had kind of a thing, but
since she was just a common person they weren’t allowed to get married so they
married other people. When they both had their first children Leopold named his
daughter Alice, and Alice named her son Leopold and her son Leopold was the one
that died in World War I.

[Video of Staircase]

Another really cool thing about this college was that some
of the Harry Potter movies were filmed there….

If you have seen the Harry Potter movies, when you look at
this picture you will notice that it is very similar to the dining hall in the
movie, besides the fact that there are 3 rows of tables here and 4 in the
movie. When they were wanting to make the movie they visited Christ College and
as soon as they walked into the dining hall they knew that that is exactly what
they were imagining when they read the books. But since there are students that
go to school there that need to eat 3 times a day they knew that they couldn’t
actually film it there so they built an exact replica. There were a few other
places around Oxford that the Harry Potter films were filmed at, including a
library, a tree, some staircases, and a few other places.

[Video of Courtyard]

(Since you can’t watch the video yet, I must say that not
only was Harry Potter filmed there, but a scene from the Golden Compass was
filmed there, and a scene from X-Men first class filmed there as well)

After leaving that amazing college of the Christ Church we
started walking down towards the center of Oxford and stood in front of this
door and right away I ran up and took a picture of the pillars on each side of
the door.…

It turns out that C.S. Lewis used to walk by there every day
and when he wrote the Chronicles of Narnia it was his inspiration for Mr.
Thomnas the goatman that Lucy meets when she first goes to Narnia.

Not only that, but the lamppost that Lucy sees when she
first steps into Narnia was right there.

Annnnnnnd the door was inspiration for Aslan! So pretty much
it was awesome!

These are Some other beautiful buildings around the town of Oxford. If I have time, I'll explain later what they are :)

So we stopped in Stratford-upon-Avon for lunch which really
wasn’t that exciting, but I did get to see from the outside Shakespeare’s
birthplace…so that was pretty neat!
But lunch was just so-so.

So day four started out earlier than any day so far. We had
to meet in the Lobby by 8am to make our way to the Supreme Court building to
meet Constable Richard Watson and Phil (I didn’t catch his last name but he was
pretty cool so all I really needed to remember was Phil).

From there they walked us to Downing Street, which is where
the prime minister and a few other important people live. It was very exciting
because we actually got to go through the gates and take pictures right in
front of the Prime Minister’s residence which most people don’t get to do, much
less if you are an American.

The Prime Minister lives at #10 Downing Street. There are no
locks on the door because there are guards that are always there making sure no
one breaks in. The gates of Downing Street were added in 1984 because of the
war with Northern Ireland and the name Downing street came from a chief spy for
royalty named George Downing. There was a while mess about him changing sides a
bunch of times and the last time he changed sides the King at the time gave him
the street as a gift. In the 60’s the building was falling apart so they
decided to rebuild it. The only problem was that it was red so in order to keep
the look the same that it had been for years and years (black) they
artificially colored it to make it the same.

This is a picture of our awesome Tour Guide/Cops Phil on the
left, Our awesome teacher Tracy Nobiling, The Vice President of Chadron State
Dr. Snare, his wife, and Constable Richard Watson.

Actual Guard!

Pictures around London

[Insert pictures of Saint James Palace and guard]

These are pictures of Saint James Palace and the guard.
Every day at 4pm the guard has to be changed because one day a guard was found
drunk and unable to actually keep watch because he was drunk. So for hundreds
of years there has been a change at 4 every day because of that one instance.

[Insert picture of arena of Saint James Palace]

This is the big arena that they use for the Queens Birthday
Parade

[Insert picture of Naval Building]

This is a picture of the Naval armory that was built, and to
keep it inconspicuous they covered it with vines. There are also no windows in
the whole building and the walls were 20 ft thick so it could stand a German
bomb dropped right on it.

[insert picture of national police memorial]

This is a picture of The National Police Memorial that is
dedicated to all the police that have ever lost their lives serving for the
country.

[Insert picture of entrance of Mall]

This is the front entrance of the Mall (which is pronounced
Maaaaal) which is the street that leads to Buckingham Palace which is also the
place that they do the march for the changing of the guards.

[Insert picture of rest of Mall]

This is the picture of the rest of the Mall

[Insert picture of flag poles]

I thought that this was interesting because all the flag
poles had crowns on the tops of them.

[Insert Picture of Saint James Garden]

This is a picture of Stain James Garden, not much that I can
say about it, other than it was beautiful.

[Insert pictures of guards]

On our way to Buckingham Palace we stopped at this place
that these guards were watching and I learned some pretty interesting
information about the guards. These that were standing there were called the
Coldstream Guards because they had a red little stripe on the right side of
their bearskin hat. The way that you can tell what regiment that they are in is
by the way their buttons are. So if their buttons are spaced in twos they are
in the second regiment, if they are in threes they are in the third, so on and
so forth. Because I am writing this without internet and I can’t for the life
of me remember what the guards with the white stripe on the side of their
bearskin hats but I do remember why they had the white stripes. They were the
part of the guards that had bombs and they would pull the tab and hold it over
their head and white smoke would come out.

[Insert pictures of Buckingham Palace]

The next thing that we did was walk by Buckingham Palace and
man was it awesome!

[Insert pictures of building on our way to the resting
place]

It wasn’t time for us to be at Buckingham Palace so we
walked to the place that all the cops eat at when they have big events in the
city of London.

[Insert picture of Titanic Building]

The interesting thing about the place that we stopped to rest
at besides the fact that all the cops eat there when there is big events, is
that it was built so that they could investigate how the Titanic sunk, and how
they lowered the boats down. So the balcony and the arch were pretty much exact replicas of the
Titanic.

[Insert pictures of gate]

After getting some refreshments at the Titanic building it
was time to walk to Buckingham Palace to watch the Guard change! The awesome
part of the whole experience was that we got to go into the gates of Buckingham
Palace and watch the guard change. It was cool because all the people were
watching us from the gate while we were standing right next to the palace and
they were taking pictures of us like we were important or something. Little did
they know, that we are just a bunch of college kids from Chadron, Nebraska! The
sad thing was that we weren’t allowed to take pictures once we were inside the
gate. But here is a little bit of what I remember from the Guard Change…

The guards have this big ceremony once every day in the
summer and fall and once every other day in the winter and spring. Which is
crazy because the whole ceremony took like an hour and a half to two hours. Basically,
in short all the guards from Buckingham Palace and Saint James Palace March
over behind the Marching band and wait for the new guards to come. While they
are waiting the guard with the flag paces back and forth which was a tradition
so that the people in the army would know what flag to meet at and/or fight for
because a lot of the time, it was a bunch of peasant armies. While the flag was
pacing back and forth so was the captain. They did this so that they could
check for people that were drunk and so that the people knew who their captain
was and who they needed to take orders from. Besides them pacing around there
were also two guards patrolling. They had to do this because one time Queen
Victoria came down and both of the guards were asleep so she said “none of
that!” and they had to pace around, and they still do that to this day. After
what seemed like forever the new guards came marching down and stood facing the
old guards. Both of the bands took turns playing different songs but the two
that I remember were the Clint Eastwood theme, and Sir Duke. Both of the bands
were amazing, and I’m not gonna lie, I really wanted to just go and grab a
saxophone and join in with them. Before the guards could actually switch off we
had to wait for the Calvary to trot by on their horses because the queen was in
the building. On any other day they wouldn’t have to wait for that because the
queen usually isn’t there (which I would like to point out is awesome and that
means that we were pretty close to the queen). The coolest thing about being
there waiting is that the two captains, one from the new guard and one from the
old one both came up to us and talked to us. Which according to Constable
Richard Watson, has never happened before. He then told us that the captains
are usually from very well to do families because they have to keep their suit
tailored themselves and the belt on their uniform alone costs 3000 pounds! We
were also told that those captains were in the rank of major. After the Calvary
passed the new guards marched off and so did the old guards and everything was
done so it was time for us to go. It was definitely an experience that I will
forever remember!

[Picture of Scotland Yard]

After eating it was time to go to Scotland Yard, which I was
very excited about because I thought we were going to tour it, but it turns out
that we were just going to attend a lecture, and I’m sorry to say, it was very
hard to stay awake for and it didn’t really keep my attention despite their
efforts.

It was time to head home, and I was very tired and started
getting really cranky. So instead of going to dinner with my roommates and a
few of the others in our group I stayed in the hotel and took a nap, which was
much needed because I was getting to the point where I just wanted to punch
everyone in the face. Thank GOD for naps!

Thursday, May 16, 2013

So after much debate about what we were going to do last night, we finally decided to go to this Medeval Banquet. We called and made reservations and it was set. We decided to leave about an hour early because we figured it would take some time to find the place....and it did. Not only did we take the most ridiculously long tube ride (because the only thing we were thinking about when deciding on what route to take, was how many times we had to change trains). The ride itself took an hour....which was not necessary. Then when we got out of the tube, we went the wrong way and walked much further than we needed to go. To be fair though, there is no directions on the brochure, it just says that its within walking distance...ptsh It was pretty much a Labyrinth getting there (only not as cool because David Bowie isn't singing the whole time).

Anyways after much searching and stopping and asking for directions (because no men were with us). We finally found it! So we walked into this dark place that was located underground. And it was most definitely different...we didn't sit at tables by ourselves...we sat with other people. Obviously, the first thing I did when I got there was go and get some alcohol. I was frustrated, and uh, I'm in London!

Yeah, thats me....and my pear cider. I love it, and I figure, why try to drink other beers when this is just so freaking good!

Anyways, we had a woman who was our Wench. And when you needed something, you were supposed to bang on the table as hard as you could, yell "WENCH" and tell her what she should fetch you.

The first thing that she brought us was this soup that you could only drink from the bowl...no spoons...It was some sort of vegetable soup that had been pureed. It was pretty tasty. When I first saw it though I was scared because I thought it was tomato soup...and I hate tomato soup.

(I'll continue writing about this, but I'm being kicked out of this place for now)

We were sitting with some pretty interesting people. 4
people were from Australia and 4 from Canada, but they weren’t together, it
just happened to be a happy coincidence.

The next thing on the menu was this really weird ass plate
of meat and cheese. Most of it was okay, but there was this weird meat that
looked kind of like bologna but it had the consistency of cat food. I don’t
know it had an okay flavor but the texture was so weird.

In between the meals that they served us there was some
pretty interesting entertainment. A couple of the girls were contortionists and
all I could think was…”man I wish I was that flexible”

The next thing they brought us was this big pot full of
chicken. Morgan and I decided to eat like barbarians, ya know, to keep up with
the whole Medieval thing. But the funny thing was, one of the young Australians
that was sitting there said “its not often that you get a big tub of chicken
brought to you” to which Morgan and I both said at the same time “Unless you go
to KFC” he seemed kind of somber and replied with “oh”. After that Morgan and I
looked at each other and said “ Merica, Fuck Yeah!” Which has kind of been our
theme throughout the trip so far.

Not only was there some pretty awesome contortionists but
there was also beautiful singing going on between most of the staff. But the
two people that had the most amazing voices were the King and Queen.

After the singing was finished our Wench brought us some
pretty delicious apple pie while we watched an “epic” sword fight. It didn’t
last very long but it was still amusing.

The night was drawing to a close and Morgan and I were
pretty satisfied. But then were very surprised when they started playing club
music. After we went to the bathroom we came out and there was a circle of
older women trying to dance. I must say it was pretty damned amusing because
none of them could dance. Morgan almost convinced me to get in the middle and show
them some awesome moves but we left instead.

Needless to say, since we knew where we were going, we
didn’t get lost but I did take an awesome picture of the dock that the banquet
was by (Saint Katherine’s Harbor) at night. It was so beautiful and I wish my
camera did it justice, but I guess that’s what happens when you get a camera
for free at prom. On the way home we did not take an hour because we actually
paid attention to the rout we should take. Overall I would say it was a pretty
successful day.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Today started out, just as early as it did yesterday. But the difference was, I got up and was ready to go and ate breakfast and everything! I was on top of the world today! Anyways, like I'm sure most of my journey's will include, we took the tube to the Supreme Court! Which happened to be right in front of the tower that holds Big Ben and Westminster Abbey! We haven't went there and toured yet, but it will be on our list of things to do!

The CJ group in front of the Clock Tower that hold Big Ben!...and oh yes, we did hear that shit!

Besides the fact that it was cold, I would think its safe to say, that I am a BAMF!

Anyways, after getting across the park to the Supreme Court building I looked up and noticed just how beautiful it was. There were carvings in the building and everything. I know I've said this before, but I really do love the detail in all the buildings here in London!

This is the front of the Supreme Court building! Look at how amazingly detailed it is!

These are the two emblems on both sides of the doors to the front of the building.

After gawking at the building and meeting up with Dr. Nobilings friend/our tour guide for tomorrow Constable Richard Watson who just from the few minutes we were with him seemed really awesome, we were able to go inside. This security system was much like the one yesterday, where we had to take off our coats and put our purses in the box to go through the scanner. The only difference was were were actually able to take our cameras inside! ANNND take pictures. So even though I don't have pictures right now...I will...don't worry!

There are 3 court rooms in the Supreme Court building. The interesting thing is the UK didn't establish a Supreme Court until 2005, and didn't open it until 2009. Before that, the building was used as one of the Crown Courts of the area. The Supreme court sees civil and criminal cases and everything is recorded by video cameras (which is very different from the United States). They accept about 80 cases a year and get in between 200 and 250 applications a year. In order for the Supreme Court to accept a case it must be an arguable point of law with a general public interest. Unlike the Crown Courts, the Supreme Court is very informal and relaxed, more businesslike. In Crown Courts, (which we will see on Saturday) they wear wigs and gowns. Some things changed when the Supreme Court started. The senior legislatures that were part of the Crown Court moved over and started being the Legislatures of the Supreme Court. Unlike in Crown Court, if a Legislature moves to the Supreme Court they loose the right to vote, and the ability to get into the building was much easier. If someone is in the Supreme Court, they are required to retire at the age of 70, but if they choose (at least the ones that are old right now) they can go back and sit in the House of Lords (like I said, the newer Legislatures can't do that anymore). In order to become a Legislature in the Supreme Court an individual must have 15 years of legal experience But they don't have to have been judges before, they just have to have any form of legal experience.

Right in the middle of the wall there is an emblem designed by Sir Peter Blake. Who designed the 1967 Beatles Album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

This this emblem represents the four floral emblems of the United Kingdom. They compromise of a Tudor rose (which represents England) conjoined with leaves of a leek (representing Wales), a flax for Northern Ireland, and a Thistle (representing Scotland).

Not only is this emblem found in this room, and different areas of the Supreme Court building, it is also the design in the carpet, and in the curtains! It is pretty intense, and apparently has caused a lot of controversy but I thought it was pretty cool.

The first courtroom that we were in was very modern and sleek, and the second one was much more traditional.

Here is a picture of the Criminal Justice group in the second room we visited.

This is the first courtroom that we visited, much more modern than the other one.

Yeah, I'm pretty much a big deal.

These are pictures of the second court room that we visited, it was much more old school.

After learning about some of the History of this room we were able to go up and watch the Supreme Court case that was going on in the last courtroom. You could either go in and watch, or watch what was going on, on a TV screen. I chose not to go in because I liked to make fun of what was going on. I mean the Legislatures were just making fun of the guy that was presenting the case, and the lawyers behind the presenter were trying really hard not to laugh. So it was safe for me with my loud mouth to just stay in the lobby.

After watching what was going on in the Courtroom for awhile we got to go down and look at the small museum in the basement. It was pretty interesting and I got some sweet pictures

It was finally time for us to leave so we made our way back to the Tube to begin our adventure back to the hotel. Got some pretty awesome pictures on the way back....which will be coming soon!